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The tricky bit about going to some place like the Kennedy Space Center, is that they rarely if ever have a street number. Heck, if they’re big enough, they often are on their own special street purpose built just for them and these places pretty much universally are without signage. It would be like saying, “What’s the Pentagon’s address?” I’m willing to guess that if you wrote, “The Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia” on an envelope and put it in the mail, not only would your letter there with no issues but you’d also get your very own little file with your own name on it in the very same building. It’s huge. Far larger than any puny little street sign or set of brass plated number that they might put out front. The thinking goes that if you can’t seem to take notice of the massive complex to your left, than a small green sign on a post isn’t going to help you either, and this I believe, it true. The trouble comes when you inject a computer into the equation. They want specifics.

If the Space Center has a driveway address, then I couldn’t find it.

What I had settled for was punching in “Titusville, Florida” into the screen and then selecting the button marked, “City Center.” My hope was that with NASA being kind of a big deal with the locals that once there, I could revert to my eyes and brain method of navigation, hopefully without a hilarious-in–retrospect sort of outcome. My worry now was just where in Titusville was the city center versus the place we needed to be. I continued to watch the GPS and follow its direction, but I began to talk back it with the same strange hope that inhabits the minds of sports fans as they watch the game on their TV. Maybe, if I tried hard enough, I could get it to listen to my concerns.

“Turn left onto Route 95 North”

“Really? Are you sure about that? The road sign says that I should keep going strait.”

“Exit right in one hundred yards.”

“I don’t know Erma. (I had named the female voice in the little black box Erma since I felt that I needed something to call her) I think you might be wrong on this one.”

“Exit in fifty yards.”

“I don’t know…”

“Turn now onto Route 95.”

One last thought of independence went flitting through my head like a moth as the exit opened wide to my right, leading to its own dark and unknown path. It was decision time. Who’s smarter: Erma or me?

The triangle of grass delineating the end of the exit ramp came rushing on at highway speed.

“Gah! Alright! Fine!”

A heavier than normal deceleration and swerve quickly followed.

“Who are you talking to Daddy?”

“Ummm. The GPS.”

Then a pause from the back seat. “Can it hear you?”

I shifted a little in my seat.

“Eh, no. Not actually.”

“Then why…”

“Hey Buddy! Look… um… There are some…” I groped for a distraction worthy point of interest in our dark surroundings. Anything to save face for being caught acting like a nimrod by arguing with an inanimate object. “That sign says that we’re almost there!”

And to make matters even better, it was the truth.

As I gazed at the signs telling me that I was indeed approaching the Space Coast, my confidence in Erma renewed and I once again realized that betting against myself was almost always the safe money. In this case I was happy to be wrong. After pulling off the highway and into the more populated areas, signs came with more and more frequency and eventually I was able to thank Erma for all her help before yanking the plug and unceremoniously stuffing her under the driver’s seat. To my right, behind some trees and an embankment, massive shapes suddenly loomed up against the darkness, pointing rigidly as if to indicate there intended destination. They were rockets. Real rockets.

“Hey Short Stack. Look over there. What do you think those are?”

Spotting things that I point out as we drive along is not his strong suit and I looked in the rearview mirror to see if he was awake enough to take direction.

“What? Were? Where are you point…” Silence. Then. “ROCKETS! Those are ROCKETS!” Any of the remaining brain fuzz affecting his performance was burned out of his cranial clockwork with the fire of a freshly lit J-2 hydrogen engine. I heard the seat belts strain against his body as he strained forward in his chair.

“DADDY! Those are ROCKETS! Right THERE! Can we go see them?!?!”

“You bet, Buddy!” The blast wave of pure joy and excitement that erupted from the back seat ripped through the fatigue that had started to pull me down and there was no way I could not join in with my son. I laughed out loud, sharing in the experience of a passion that was to be imminently fulfilled. That jolt was more than sufficient to have us back up at full power and ready for anything.

Pulling into the drive that lead to the vast parking lots, I reached down and jammed the special parking placard that had come with our tickets for the launch. We were waved into our directed parking area and I looked around to get my bearings. I’d need to find this car again in about six or seven hours but things would look substantially different by then. I gazed up at the massive lot identification pole marked that we were only a few rows away from.

As I scanned across the giant plateau of paved and neatly lined parking lots, I spotted another pole not too far away emblazoned with a Number five and the name Wally Schirra below. Number three, in the distance, was too far away to read, but I bet I knew what it was. Each lot, it seemed, was named for one of the original Mercury astronauts and emboldened with knowledge of these men via a recent viewing of the movie, The Right Stuff, I was tempted to point this out to Short Stack.

But he was four and it was midnight. Once again I felt a bit like the bad parent for dragging my very little boy out at such a ridiculous hour. The fact that he was still dressed in his jammies and had remained barefoot didn’t help ease my mind either. Then I spotted the car next to us and the young couple who had just arrived seconds after we had. They were here to enjoy the launch and so were both their small children, one of whom couldn’t have been possibly more than two. It was then that I realized we were in good company and it was time to get ready.

As the robotic female voice clipped efficient driving instructions from the little moving map suctioned to the dashboard, I fumbled with the radio in the hopes of possibly finding a bit of classical that might lull my boy back to sleep. Just because I had to be bright tailed and bushy eyed for the foreseeable future didn’t mean that he couldn’t take advantage of the car trip and get a little more rest. This however, was my point of view and though Short Stack might be able to understand the opportunity, bringing it to his attention served little purpose. There was a good reason for that.

My wife, if not a night person, is at least and evening lover and she can easily stay up until eleven or so with little effort. I, on the other hand, am a certified, dyed in the feathers, night owl and have been since… well, I was Short Stack’s age. If allowed to keep to my own schedule, I will happily stay up until some time around two AM or so and then somehow, after a few hours sleep, manage to crawl back out from under the covers at a still respectable eight o’clock.. I might try to shoehorn in a ten or fifteen minute power nap in there someplace to avoid nodding off unintentionally at an inopportune moment… such as when I’m running machinery at high RPM, but on the whole, I’m happiest to work on projects when it’s dark out and tend to get the lion’s share of my stuff done when most of my contemporaries are either asleep or watching Letterman through three quarters closed eyes. This would all be fine if the world let you keep the schedule that your body and brain was inclined to, but sadly, it rarely does. There are pre-set times when certain things must be done and that means that I first must convince my late night son to just lay down and TRY and fall asleep and then a few hours later, do the whole thing over again on my self. I just try not to put us as much of a fuss and I can easier tell if I’m lying about actually having to go pee again.

My son has completely inherited this nocturnal gene of mine and now I’m forced to choose between being the stern parent enforcer who demands that he go to bed since it’s already two hours past bedtime or simply cave in and let him stay up and continue to play quietly since I know that, truthfully, he really isn’t tired in the slightest.

I know this.

I’m not either.

Now, as we rocketed down the Florida Interstate system with a sigh of relief and a heady sense of mission, I happily put the lit up sprawl of Entertainmentville behind us. I eventually gave up on scanning the unfamiliar radio frequencies since it appeared to be an split between country music and tent revival style preaching, neither of which is my particular cup of tea. Instead, to keep my mind occupied, I started watching the clock, averaging my best, “pretty unlikely to be pulled over” speed and tried to work out our arrival time. If things went as they should, we would be pulling in just at the appointed moment. This naturally got me nervous. With any possible time buffer we could have had, taken up with actual sleeping, it was exactly the sort of thing that Murphy’s law loves to have for a delightful little snack.

“Dad?”

“Yah, buddy? What do you need?”

I was living in fear of another unscheduled pee break since pulling over on a Florida highway at night boasted not only vicious mosquitoes and chiggers but the ever present possibility of the random seven foot long alligator looking for a little something extra to go with his road kill platter.

“What are… um… What…” Words were still coming slowly and quietly, but I could sense that he was coming around to the coherent world., even if it was only at a minimum power setting. “What are they doing with the Space Shuttle now? Is it ready to launch?”

“Yah. It’s just about ready to go.” I scratched around in my head, trying to remember what I had read and seen about the preflight routine for a Shuttle launch and did my best with what I had. If he was going to be awake for the trip, as it now seemed to be, at least I’d have a chatting companion, even if the conversation was bound to be one subject deep only. “Well, I’d guess that the astronauts are awake and getting ready for the launch too. They’re having breakfast, getting dressed in their orange launch suits and will be soon be getting driven to the Shuttle and made ready for lift off in just a little while.” In truth, I didn’t know what the schedule was, but it seemed like a good guess.

He mulled this for a few minutes as we bumped along at the regular intervals of each pad of concrete.

“What are they having for breakfast?” This is exactly the kind of question my kid would think of and I liked the fact that he was curious about both what was going in to the Shuttle’s and astronaut’s respective fuel tanks.

“Hmmm… I don’t know. What ever they want I guess”

I wasn’t sure, but I sort of hoped that if you were a professional astronaut and about to ride a controlled explosion all the way into low earth orbit on a multi-multi billion dollar rocket, that the least NASA could do was splurge and get these incredibly brave folks what ever they fancied to start their day. It seems like the least that we could do.

Much of the rest of the ride went by quietly and from time to time I’d look back in the rear view mirror to see if my boy had finally nodded off during a long silent spell.

He hadn’t.

No surprise there.

The roads were black and sparsely dotted with the red tail lights of fellow travelers. In the quiet of the car, a nagging doubt had started to coalesce on the inside back of my skull and as its grip got firmer and firmer on my brain stem, I began to pay more attention to the road signs that blasted by in the glare of my rented headlights. I had started to doubt my digital navigator.

GPS’s are amazing tools I’ll grant you that I loved to fiddle with them when a friend happened to have one. I thought they were kind of neat, in roughly the same way I thought salad spinners were neat. They did a job, but they still seemed sort of silly to actually own. When it came to driving, I tended to be a luddite. I liked maps. I liked road signs. I liked not having to use batteries or plugs when I wanted to find out where I was. I love technology but really, I like to be able to do things my self. This trip though, had gotten me to choke back my caveman-like attitude and embrace change. When I had factored in my young traveling companion, our tight time schedule and driving unknown roads for unknown distances to unknown exit ramps, I realized that the safe money was on having a navigator to assist me, electronic or not. So, it was with hat and hand that I had visited my neighbors whom I knew were the owners of just such a magical device. I had knocked on the door and, after they had finished spinning dry the freshly washed spinach leaves that would be part of their dinner, happily entrusted me with their GPS. I had thanked them, packed it in our luggage and once we had arrived, used it happily. What I hadn’t done, naturally, was read the manual.

After I completed the sweep of our seating area to insure that we left behind no beloved toys or articles of clothing, I moved to let Short Stack out first. Partly, this was so I could keep my eyes on him but mostly so I could act like a human dam to block the human tsunami behind us from crunching him flat or at least absent mindedly cudgeling him with a carry on the size of a phone booth. When you’re only about three feet tall, most of the world takes little notice of you and when you toss into the mix an almost pathological need that some people have to bolt for the exits, even before the plane reaches the gate sometimes, you have a formula for a lightly wounded but loudly crying kid. As we passed the now open cockpit doors and waving attendants, I couldn’t help but crane my neck a tad for that brief second long look at all the switches, screens and knobs. As a kid, I loved getting a chance to see airplane cockpits and I was sometimes even rewarded for my nosiness with a full tour from a member of the flight crew. My own son however, barely gave it a glance.

It wasn’t a rocket.

Just out side the airplane door was our red stroller that had been gate checked in Maine and with only minor protest, I managed to convince him that riding was far more amenable to walking… at least for me. On foot, a four year old’s path can be hard to predict and even harder to dictate and when you then consider that their legs are only about a foot and a half long, you can forget about getting anywhere quickly. As we scooted out of the arrival gate, I tried to get my bearings. First things first, we needed our bag. Short Stack has an amazing ability to ask me something, start telling me something or simply start sneezing at the precise moment that I need desperately to hear something else. He can be quiet for ten minutes but the second the guy on the radio starts in with tomorrow’s weather or someone starts to leave a message on the answering machine, something clicks in his head and he immediately starts chatting away with purpose and volume. If you try and crane your head to the speaker or cup your ear to attempt and listen, he talks louder. We’ve talked about this I don’t know how many times, but it’s a lesson that has yet to stick and he had just done it to me when the baggage claim carousel number had been given to us on the plane. It was time to employ my secret weapon.

Zen Navigation.

The name, so far as I know, was invented by the wonderful Douglas Adams of Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame and though I cannot take credit for the title, it is a practice that I had been employing for much of my life. I just didn’t know what it was called. The idea is truly elegant in its simplicity. When you are lost, simply look for someone who appears to know where they are going… and follow them. You might not wind up where you expected, but you might just wind up where you should be. I tell you, it’s amazing how often this works. Plus, you get to chat with the follow-ee if you get spotted.

I’ve been to Orlando Airport many times before, but it had been a while. In my previous life as a business owner, I had come through this airport over and over again to do the tradeshows that always seemed to be located in this neck of the woods. Before that, I had come on various vacations. Because if this, I knew that there was a train involved somewhere but it had been long enough that I couldn’t remember exactly where. I needed someone to follow. To my joy, she found me before I actually spotted her.

“So are you guys going to… you know… (Disney)? He must be pretty excited!”

The last word was spoken in a hushed, almost inaudible whisper from behind the back of a hand. The whisperer and now my unknowing tour guide was a smiling young woman who I recognized immediately from the plane.

I smiled back. “Nope. We’re actually going to go see the Space Shuttle take off. It’s what he loves more than anything.” I gestured down to the stroller with my head since it was the only part of me that wasn’t involved with pushing something or clinging to bags. How was I going to manage our suitcase? Hmmm. “And yes, he’s excited! We both are. I think what we’ll hopefully see will far outweigh Disney.”

“Oh, wow! That’s fantastic! You’re right. That’s way better. You guys are going to have a great time! When does it take off?”

Happily, things were working out just as I had hoped. I let our new friend take the lead by a step and a half and she lead the way. All I had to do was keep the small talk going and I’d have a guide and possibly some help dealing with doors or escalators. Within a few minutes, she took us right to the little train that ferried people to the correct terminal. Short Stack, who had been fairly passive thus far as he sat in his stroller, now started to perk up. Trains seemingly are a universal point of interest to kids. It’s like a common language of fascination to anyone under the age of six. Some hold onto it for life.

“Can I get up?!?” He said this as he practically hovered over his seat with interest.

“Sure. Just hop up here.” I pointed to a seat right in the front window. The trains are automated, so no driver is needed which means that there is an unfettered view down the track. The doors closed and as we quietly pulled out of the arrivals terminal, he had his forehead pressed tight to the glass. I could tell that he was disappointed with the short duration of the ride. It only took about a minute and a half to get where we were going.

Following our scout and feeling a bit like a fish in a school, I traveled along with the other members of our flight until reaching the baggage claim carousel. Short Sack marveled at the procession of bags as they bumped and squeaked past us and was happy to point out our own suitcase as it eventually appeared. Now, all we needed was the car.

As predicted, pushing the stroller, toting the carry-ons AND pulling the suitcase proved to be a serious challenge. All I really needed to do to round it out and set this experience to “expert” mode was a dog on a leash. Fortunately, I’m not a dog person.

After a Keystone Kopps-esque walk to the car rental desks that left my shins bruised and my hands cramping, I got the chance to see Murphy’s Law in action. We passed desk after desk, manned by bored and listless attendants without a customer to be seen. When we made it to the rental company I had booked with, the line snaked back and forth many rows deep. It was packed.

Crap.

Short Stack was being as good as a tired kid his age could be and amused himself for a while with talk of rockets soon to be seen.

“So, are you going to go see the Shuttle launch?” The question had come from a jovial looking British man just ahead of us by one bend in the serpentine line. He must have overheard Short Stack and I discussing the fun to come.

“Yah. It’s our fist time. How about you?”

“Oh, I hope to. Do you need tickets?”

Someone else in another part of the line answered for me. “Yes and no. It depends what you are looking for. You can see it great from US Route 1 but if you want to see it from NASA, you’ll need tickets.”

I added, “You might want to check on the Kennedy Space Center’s FaceBook page though. There may be some extras to be had.”

“But make sure you arrive on time.” This bit of information came from yet another part of the line. Were we ALL here for the same reason? Within a minute or two, I would guess that a quarter of the people there had broken into rocket talk. One space question had been asked, but there seemed to be no control rods in this conversation as I listened to the chain reaction take place all around us. It was like all that potential had been just bottled up and waiting for someone to release it. With only four Shuttle flights left, it seemed to be on everybody’s mind.

My own part of the conversation switched to a guy who did have tickets and was thinking about ignoring the required arrival time and simply showing up about an hour before launch. After I explained that the doors would be shut and locked by then and that the lines there were likely to put the one we were in now to shame, he elected to change his mind and even thanked me for the insight. I felt like I had saved someone’s vacation and was justifiably proud of my self.

“Daddy, I have to pee.”

Those words brought me crashing back down.

We had been in a long and slow moving line for easily fifteen minutes now and more people had been piling in behind us. I was burdened with luggage, a stroller and the realization that leaving now would put me off schedule with the meager amount of time we had before we needed to head to the launch.

“Just a few more minutes, buddy. Can you hold it?” I gave a hopeful smile and tried not to think of that dad on the plane from so many years ago.

“Yah. Okay.” He sounded confident. Go, boy go!… Or rather, don’t!

Please?!

The line moved ahead in spurts and then would stall out again from time to time. I watched a couple up at one of the desks who had been talking with an attendant for well over what you would think it would take to rent a car and started wondering what on earth they could be having an issue with. I started to dislike them for no better reason than the fact that by simply accepting the terms of rental and moving on, it would get us that much closer to a men’s room.

Soon, we were at the head of the line and Short Stack’s eyes were starting to bulge.

“Allllllmost there. Are you alright?” I knew for a fact that if he hadn’t been in the stroller just then he would have been doing a mean tinkle dance.

“Yah… But I really have to go.”

I was starting to sweat.

“I can help whomever is next” What sweet music to my ears!

As the attendant behind the rental counter went through her well rehearsed lines at a measured pace, I kept looking down at my little boy who was looking pretty anxious by now.

“Daaaaaad! I really have to pee!”

I looked back at the attendant. “Um, I’ve got to get him to the men’s room or I’m going to have a big problem. Is there any way we can we just cut right to the chase here?” Much to my surprise, rather than being irked at my request to hurry things along, it seemed to somehow snap her out of her corporate coma and release the human trapped inside the uniform. She must be a parent. A mom would understand this. She smiled, took a breath and kicked things into high gear. Blazing though the jargon and boilerplate, she managed to stuff everything she was supposed to tell the customer into a hyper-condensed, machinegun fast volley. Each time Short Stack made another comment about his maximum holding capacity, she would chuckle and pick the pace up that much faster. I think she viewed it as a race. Who would win?!?

As we approached the last stage of the transaction, I was hit with an unexpected issue: the cost. The final figure had come in at twice what I was quoted online and this made me pause. I’m sure I could have gotten at least an explanation or better yet, a lower price if I had pressed, but to do so now would risk my son’s britches as well as made me look like a total jerk after getting this nice woman to do her job in about a quarter of the time I’m sure it normally takes her. I thought about all this for about two seconds… and then swiped my card.

If you’re wondering how badly I wanted to avoid embarrassment for my son and the cleanup involved, the answer is two hundred and twenty dollars.

With a fast thank you and directions to the bathroom, we zoomed away in just the nick of time.

Phew.

A few minutes later, I was belting Short Stack into our new car and getting ready to hit the road. Just before I climbed in my self, I spotted a nickel on the ground. You’ve no doubt heard the saying, “Find a penny, pick it up and all the day you’ll have good luck.” Well, I looked down, saw the shiny nickel and thought, “Hey, that’s five days worth of luck there! I’ll take it!”

We were finally in Florida and our first hotel was just around the corner. We’d get to float in the pool before dinner and then crash for a very few hours before heading out on the most vital part of our journey. In just a few hours, we’d be at the Kennedy Space Center. He’d finally get his rockets!

“Hi Mom. Yes, I just got on board a few minutes ago… Oop, looks like were starting to move. Yah, I’m excited to go too but I’m missing the kids already.” I was trying to keep my voice down as I spoke into the phone, aware that the rest of the train car was nearly silent.

This is going to be a special couple of days. Not only am I taking off to go play all by my self, just like other adults do, I was getting there by rail. The “there” part is Boston, and the “all by my self” bit doesn’t mean “alone” as much as “not having to referee small children bent on annoying each other and cleaning up my living room which has been turned into a multicolored mine field of easily crunchable toys.” Action Girl is at the helm of the house for the next forty-eight hours and I’m getting a chance to reconnect with my inner adulthood and an old friend from High School, Ioseph.

I’ve spent some really wonderful time on trains over the years. I like the sway of the cars, the muffled rumble and the view of the back sides of cities and towns that the you get no other way unless you spend a lot of quality time with hobos and drifters. As I type these words right now, my coffee is at hand, my legs are crossed and I’m bumping along at fifty or so miles per hour, watching the trees go whipping by just past the lightly grimy windows. My train departed right on time and, for me, the unusual thing is that I’m doing this in my own country.

The vast majority of my rail experience comes from time spent over seas. The U.S. woefully underutilizes rail as a form of domestic travel and if you can find a train going from a place you live to a place you want to go to, it’s a noteworthy event. Europe and much of Asia is exactly the opposite. If there isn’t a train to whatever little podunk village you want to get to, it makes you stop and think, “Really?!?” Naturally, if there’s no train, there’s nearly always a bus.

I love that.

Here, in the land of the automobile, things are very different. Once, rail crisscrossed our country, taking goods and people just about everywhere they wanted to go. I’m aware that there was never the sort of rail coverage here that there is overseas, but still, it was pretty darned good. Then, for reasons totally inexplicable to me, they started to tear up the tracks. Literally. I remember this happening in my hometown when I was a kid. As a child, I can clearly recall running full tilt out of the cobbler’s shop where my mother was valiantly trying to get me crammed into a new pair of very nice and highly uncomfortable back-to-school shoes. I ran not because an escape was in order, but because the train was coming through. The tracks used to run right through downtown and bisect Main Street bringing all traffic to a halt bringing every kid within jogging distance out onto the sidewalks. It was great. Then one day, the tracks were gone and sold as scrap. I couldn’t believe it.

I didn’t get a chance to ride on an actual passenger train until years after I managed to finally get rid of those shoes. True, I did take a “scenic rail” trip with my Grandparents aboard a steam locomotive, but we didn’t really GO anywhere. It was really just a gigantic carnival ride and though I did manage to get a cinder stuck in my eye by hanging out the window like a dog in a station wagon, it was at least fun. But it was only part of the equation. I’m lumping the Disney monorail into this category as well. Though not steam powered, it was still essentially a “ride.” Come to think of it, steam would make the monorail far, far more cool and awesome. Can you imagine that one? Ohhh!

Once I started traveling abroad, I got my chance to do the train thing for real and I instantly fell in love. This was the way to travel. Leg room, sleeping compartments, the ability to ride them all night and wake up in not merely a totally different country, but a different region or even continent, and all at eye level. I loved to fly, but trains offer you a human touch that you just can’t get at thirty thousand feet.

Sometimes that human touch can be a bit powerful and hit pretty high on the Irony-O-Meter.

As I boarded my train, I looked down the empty car to pick my seat. Now, I’m not an overly tall individual, nor am short. I like to think of my self as stunningly average. I measure in at almost exactly six feet tall and though the seats on the train are far more generous in the leg room department that just about anything with wings theses days, I nevertheless eyed the four vacant front row seats, boasting easily six feet of open space in front of them, with envy. I couldn’t take one for the simple reason that I had also noticed the sign overhead mentioning that these super convenient, leg friendly seats were intended for individuals who might have legs that weren’t so friendly to their owners. They were reserved for the disabled.

No problem. I had a whole car to pick from and quickly sat in down in the next row. It was about this time that my Mom had called to see if I was already on my way. We chatted while I watched the freight yards disappear and give way to trees and fields. It was a wonderful way to spend the morning. When the conductor came though and took my ticket, I was taken a bit by surprise by something you don’t see much any more, but recovered quickly and don’t think I showed my reaction outwardly. After he left, I thought no more about it and went back to my window view.

At the next stop just a few minutes away, new passengers piled in and shuffled past my seat hauling bags like unruly children with travel plans of their own. The car was still only about twenty percent full, but this seemed to be all the excuse that was needed for the woman who plunked herself down in the reserved section and then, sitting just a bit sidewise, take up both seats. She was sixtyish, very well dressed and had no baggage to be seen outside of an expensive looking purse. The aura she projected was of a woman who did what she pleased. I don’t know where her sense of entitlement originated from, but I do know that she was ill prepared for what happened next.

Guilt, is an amazing thing. Some folks are impervious to it; some simply have a very high tolerance. People like me, crumble at the notion that someone, somewhere might be disappointed in my actions in some way. I’ve learned to live with it. This lady, looked like she had some pretty good guilt armor. She appeared unflappable. Then the ticket agent returned.

Dutifully, he examined and punched her ticket while the woman did her best to not pay him any but the most cursory attention. Then he pointed out the sign.

“You might not have noticed,” he said in a quiet but firm tone, “but these seats are reserved for disabled riders.” As he said this, he tapped the very obvious sign hovering a few inches over her head. The tapping, he did not with the hand holding his paper punch, but his other one.

The hook hand.

You don’t see many hook hands these days. Most amputees use more realistic prosthetics, but this, I feel, did a far superior job of pointing out her error. The effect it had on the able bodied woman in the disabled seating was obvious. She turned a shade of red that matched her silk scarf beautifully and after a mumbled apology and rapid gathering of personal effects she said something about how it was no problem to move to another seat which she did, eyes averted from the rest of the car passengers.

The rest of the trip down is uneventful from my perspective. The towns roll by and soon, Boston will loom ahead. I’ll be down just for an overnight and I’m staying with my friend Ioseph, so who knows what’s planned. The ride on the train though is something that I have already found a lot of joy in. It gets people all together in one place with a common goal. We’re all on the same track, literally and figuratively.

A smile shared here.
Something interesting, overheard there.

It’s all good. It gets us closer to each other, even if we’re not actually engaged in conversation. You loose that in a car. We learn how to be around other people and to respect them a bit better; something the red scarf lady got a refresher in today. Hopefully it will stick with her better than before.

I’m almost at my destination now and I expect to have a lot of fun while I’m here. I have to confess though, I’m already looking forward to riding the rails again, back home.